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A quarter of a century after South Africa's transition to democracy, the rhetoric of 'transformation' remains firmly ingrained in its higher education policy and discourse. In many of the reviews, reports, proposals, and frameworks on the transformation of the South African university system, one thing stands out: an oversupply of rhetoric and a dearth of empirical data. This article is a direct response to how infrequently data has been used and seeks to reveal the actual quantum of change, albeit with a focus on an admittedly singular element on the transformation spectrum but one which nevertheless preoccupies South Africans: equity (or race). The evidence presented in the paper shows that the absence of a clear articulation of transformation, accompanied by a lack of indicators and targets to track progress over time, hinders the progression of the discourse to equally important dimensions of performance such as efficiency, success and productivity—all of which are critical in determining the university's role in national development. The paper goes on to show that based on the data available, the public university system in South Africa is transforming given the increases over time in the number of black students and staff. However, without a clearly articulated idea of what constitutes change, one cannot claim a transformed system, and the political narrative of no transformation is likely to prevail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationalisation of the curriculum (IoC) is typically approached very differently across national, institutional and disciplinary contexts. This paper reports on research on internationalisation of the curriculum in Latin America and discusses its potential to provoke disruptive innovation in higher education internationalisation. Traditionally, approaches to internationalisation of the curriculum in Latin American universities have been focused almost solely on student mobility programs. The research reported in this paper was conducted by a project team from Brazil and Australia in 2021–2022. A qualitative methodology was used. Methods included a tri-lingual literature review of scholarly publications on curriculum internationalisation in English, Portuguese and Spanish and a modified e-Delphi methodology with a panel of experts comprising international higher education scholars and practitioners working in Latin America (and conducted in Spanish, Portuguese and English). The purpose of the research was to identify ways in which existing approaches to internationalising the curriculum in Latin America might be enhanced in order to provide more students with opportunities to develop international perspectives and intercultural knowledge and skills. The research found that there is significant potential to achieve this outcome if the process of internationalising the curriculum is approached as a long-term project involving complex collaborative boundary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon French philosophy, this study offers a novel empirical and conceptual understanding of the newly launched European Universities Initiative. In 2019, higher education institutions across the European Union created 17 new alliances as part of the first pilot phase of the initiative. This is an experiment in European and global higher education. This paper offers a conceptual contribution to the field of higher education studies, making use of a rhizomatic analysis to explore how university alliances build what the European Commission refers to as the 'European universities of the future.' Based on the conceptual reflection and findings from a small-scale empirical study, this paper concludes that the alliances within the European Universities Initiative rely on pre-existing higher education and research partnerships while at the same time experimenting to foster a diversity of institutional forms to achieve the ambitious goal of creating 'European Universities.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Representations of higher education in fiction-based sources contribute to forming public perceptions of academia, and so are a form of public pedagogy. Within popular culture representations, understandings of academics are constructed using particular tropes which build shared meanings of the profession. Conferences are one of these tropes and can thus be used as a focus to explore the construction of the academic profession in popular culture representations of higher education. This paper draws on a research project which explored representations of conferences in narrative fiction texts (novels, graphic novels, short stories). In this paper, we analyse references to conferences for what they teach us about the academic profession. The paper is based on analysis of 98 symbolic references to conferences from a sample of 23 fictional texts. Symbolic references are short references which serve as a shorthand to signal aspects of the academic profession, and in this paper, they have been analysed in terms of what they portray and where they position the reader. The paper argues that popular culture representations of academia are pedagogical, in that they show the profession to be desirable to others but encourage a disidentification with academics, reinforcing the exclusionary nature of the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political, social, and institutional environments in which contemporary universities operate have changed rather dramatically over the past two decades in ways that threaten the resilience of the academic core, both in its ability to map knowledge comprehensively and also to maintain a balance between the branches of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. This paper traces historical changes (2003–2019) in the academic core of two "flagship" research-intensive universities located in Northern Europe. The results show that some branches of the academic core are undergoing dynamic processes of program churn that make them resilient. Furthermore, the data show that this resilience is enabled in large part by bridging different branches of knowledge by establishing what we term interbranch programs. In addition to the abovementioned findings, the paper links ongoing discussions regarding change in HE systems and institutions to the literature on organizational resilience, and it advances insights for a possible future theory of how adaptation plays out in the academic core over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In higher education institutions, critical race theory (CRT) is known to be associated with fields that study racial disparities or systemic oppression such as law, education, and ethnic studies. The impression that CRT is unrelated to fields like business or computer science may have led scholars and practitioners from these disciplines to put their focus on elsewhere than on racial inequality and its implication in their research and practice, despite apparent need. To counter such fallacy, this review article—focusing primarily on the US context—discusses CRT literature in fields where its presence is less known which are nevertheless among the major domains of higher education institutions: health sciences, computer science and information technology, sports, business, and religion. By discussing example research of how scholars have utilized CRT in different fields to challenge the race-neutral thinking that often obscures structural racism, this paper exposes racism's ability to alter manifestations and to appear through various shapes and forms within the higher education context. Initial recommendations on how educators may engage in further discussions or actions will also be considered. This paper concludes that racist ideologies are often hidden behind discipline-specific vocabulary or technical language, and it is by tackling the ideologies at work underneath the technicalities can we address the chameleon-like nature of racism more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities are expected to strive for excellence but also for gender balance. Narrow interpretations of excellence in universities hinder women's advancement in academia. In this paper, we ask if there are ways that these policies may be reconciled. Excellence is an "empty signifier" that must be filled with meaning. We have investigated how Heads of Departments enact "excellence" and gender balance in hiring processes in four Norwegian universities. Many HoD argued for broadening excellence criteria and framed excellence as a collective rather than an individual concern. This allows for reconciling top-down institutional demands for excellence and diversity while catering to local needs. Thus, our paper suggests that in a context where increased diversity among faculty is called for, this may open up a space for critical reflection about the criteria for assessing academic quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the mechanisms through which higher education institutions (HEIs) explore, focusing on organizational status and institutional logic. We hypothesize that the exploration mechanisms differ depending on the public and private sectors. Revisiting middle-status conformity, we assert that the U-shaped relationship is stronger for private HEIs than public HEIs, as private HEIs are more concerned about status. We also argue that the congruence of institutional logics between HEIs and their funding partners foster exploration based on the sense of security. In contrast, when HEIs receive funding from partners with incongruent logics, they explore less because of their tendency to avoid additional uncertainty. We empirically test our hypotheses using data on US HEIs between 2014 and 2020. Our results demonstrate that a U-shaped relationship between status and exploration is stronger for private HEIs. Moreover, non-market funding providers, whose institutional logic congruent with public HEIs yet incongruent with private HEIs, increase the exploration of public HEIs and decrease the exploration of private HEIs. By integrating theories on organizational learning, status, and institutional theory, our study contributes to a nuanced understanding of the differences between public and private HEIs with respect to exploration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, international or migrant faculty researchers have explored the work roles, academic experiences, and identities of this community, while a new body of research has begun to draw on insights from migration studies to investigate to what extent and how they are integrated on campus. This paper seeks to extend these discussions by considering on-campus support for international faculty, their integration into the host society, and the relationship between these factors. Focusing on Japan and drawing on both a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews of recipients of the prestigious Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Post-Doctoral Fellowship, this study reveals that on-campus support is associated with higher levels of integration in Japanese society, but there are notable deficiencies in the linguistic and social support offered by universities. These findings indicate that universities seeking to attract and retain international talent should initially invest in language learning support services and reflect on the intermediary role they play between international faculty members and the local community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in university staffing structures, the professionalisation of support staff and their increasing role in universities have been studied with varying perspectives and methods over the last two decades. The discussion has recently been enriched by the research conducted in different national settings. This paper contributes to the international debate and elaborates on the theme through two aims. The first is to investigate the emergence of a specific qualified professional group and its characteristics by analysing personnel data from Finnish universities. Second, the article seeks to indicate recent developments in the number and composition of professional staff in Finnish universities. The study is based on national official statistics on university personnel, some of which are previously unpublished, and on personnel data collected from all Finnish universities using an analytical framework built for this study. The results provide a comprehensive picture of the changing structure of the university workforce and a new insight into a previously studied occupational group through a lens of Finnish university system. The decline in the number of professional staff and the emergence of new kind of professionals in Finland reflect changes witnessed elsewhere, especially in Europe. Highly skilled professionals work in roles with specific knowledge, competences and responsibilities, which points out the differentiation of functions in the university system. This knowledge will support efforts to develop the university organisation by building on the competence of all staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early career academics face a rapidly changing higher education sector and too little is known about what helps them flourish in the profession. This paper responds to that gap by reporting research undertaken in a single or intrinsic case study of one Australian university. We invited participation from a full cohort of 1019 academics in one large College. Of those, 41 early career academics or ECAs and 45 more senior academics or MSAs engaged in a 50-question survey. Of those, 18 ECAs and 16 MSAs who had flagged interest then completed an in-depth interview. We learned about: ECAs' work; what they and MSAs think impedes and enables that work; work-life balance; and experiences of mentoring and career development. We also asked for their perspectives on the future. We found remarkable agreement across the two cohorts that mirrors concerns expressed in a growing, internationally significant literature. Members of both cohorts appealed for strengthened organisational and sectoral commitments to caring career pathways and sought more certainty in challenging times. Our findings led us to conclude that academics have high hopes that universities and those in higher education policy settings can address work overload; enhance professional development across all duties; make leaner systems and processes; have more realistic expectations about research; and better value academics' profound commitments to higher education. Those findings accord with other results reported in comparable jurisdictions around the world and add weight to an increasingly compelling case to recentre and refocus on people in university organisational cultures and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research about the experiences of disabled staff members in UK universities, drawing on eleven semi-structured interviews with disabled staff in one university, alongside a group auto ethnography conducted by the first four authors, all of whom identified as disabled academics. Disability is generally considered to be predominantly an issue for students, both in practice and in the literature. By contrast, taking a social practice approach, we focused on the barriers faced by disabled employees, both overt and hidden. We found that disability was still viewed as a medical problem, and that disabled members of staff faced considerable extra labour in organising their own supports. We were often made to feel that we were unwanted and that we were 'misfits' in the institution. This paper contributes to theory by showing how social practices can become exclusionary, and how interconnections between practices matter. We discuss ways in which ableism, based on the ideal of 'individual' excellence, creates barriers for disabled staff. In the global context of Higher Education, the increasing marketization of universities in higher income countries creates a difficult climate for the values of inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, much has changed in the governance of universities since the adoption of corporate management approaches. A strong focus on efficiency, productivity and accountability arising from these approaches has been well documented in the literature. Reductions in government funding have caused universities to become more competitive and entrepreneurial. However, little is known about the impacts of these changes on the working lives of individual academics. This paper is part of an ongoing study exploring the lived experiences of 2526 Australian academics who responded to a national questionnaire. This paper builds on earlier work by holistically drawing together the earlier findings which separately analysed the teaching, research and administration/service aspects of their work. In examining the effectiveness of universities through the ability of their academics to undertake their roles, we found the voices of academics that need to be heard in the development and implementation of key policies, such as academic workload and performance, to preserve the essentially self-managed nature of their work. By combining the learning from the project through the literature review, the statistical analysis and themes from the open-ended questions, we developed a set of principles to underpin these policies in universities. These principles can guide universities to shift towards a more collaborative working relationship with academics, based on trust, and actively encourage them to play be more active in institutional decision-making, especially in relation to policies that directly affect their work. These results have implications for improving the productivity of academics and the institutions in which they work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, modern science had been dominated by a handful of Western countries. However, since the turn of the millennium, the global science landscape has undergone dramatic changes. The number of nations where a significant proportion of research done is of high international standard has now increased considerably. China particularly stands out and is today one of the leading science nations in the world. Overall, Chinese research collaborations with countries in the Western world exemplify the general trend towards increasing complexity in the global research landscape. It has gradually become obvious that differences between institutional settings need to be managed more systematically to promote cross-border research cooperation for shared benefits, from individual to institutional levels. An informed discussion of managing complex conditions necessitates an understanding of the relationship-level dynamics of research collaborations. In order to identify what aspects of international research collaborations are the most pertinent to systematically manage at individual and institutional levels, this paper investigates projects in a bilateral Swedish–Chinese funding program. The paper finds that the majority of collaborations funded had yielded positive impact in terms of publications, strengthened research capacity in research groups, and resource accumulation. The challenges found in the collaborations are related to needs such as improving transparency, ethical concerns, and imbalances in reciprocity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nursing is an old vocation but is relatively new to the academy, with schools of nursing being established in Western universities in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Their establishment was presaged by earlier moves of the preparation of pre-registration nurses from apprenticeships served in hospitals to tertiary education institutions (mainly community colleges and polytechnics) during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Preparation for a life in the professions has been a feature of universities since their inception. Nevertheless, changing a university's offerings is contested, and new disciplines and the new academics within them often struggle to establish their legitimacy within the academy. This paper challenges contemporary accounts of nursing as a discipline the weak disciplinary boundaries of which undermine its place in the academy and hamper nurse academics' development of an academic identity. Drawing on data from interviews with nursing academics, the paper discusses the ways in which the participants are, by their own actions, devising, amending and reinforcing the structures, code, rules and conceptual frameworks of the Nursing discipline. It also considers how, as they do so, these academics achieve a level of ontological congruence that is only possible as their internal biography, the nature of their day-to-day work and the expectations of their employer are able to 'rub along' together without creating the conditions for (self) destructive resistance or the exercise of coercive institutional power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at youth mobility as an ongoing, dynamic, processual experience in the making of an educational trajectory. By exploring the experiences of students who have undertaken more than one mobility experience under the Erasmus + program, we reflect on how underlying motivations change over the course of subsequent mobility experiences. In contrast to existing research, where the focus has been on reported motivations for one-off mobility experience, we discuss the latent motivations driving super-mobile educational trajectories. In doing so, we observe the ongoing reconfiguration of these trajectories through the concept of spatial reflexivity, which results in articulated and augmentative dynamics over time. Methodologically, the paper is based on qualitative material collected in person and online with such mobile young people across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the recent growth of experiential learning (EL) and the university-community (or so-called town-gown, TG) connections created as a result of this expansion. The research is framed by critical scholarship on the nature and role of the university and the place of liberal education specifically, as well as policy drivers aimed at social and economic impacts from EL. Two subthemes are also examined: first, the role of the arts, humanities and social sciences disciplines in EL expansion and, second, the extent to which TG connections focus on the university's local host community as opposed to more distant and even international arrangements. Mixed research methods including public document analysis and key informant interviews are used to document and interpret EL developments across nine varied universities in Ontario, Canada. The results underline broad sector commitment to EL that in turn creates new and different TG connections for the university. Rapid expansion has brought a variety of challenges identified both by universities and community EL partners. The paper concludes with discussion of policy implications and consideration of the future of EL in light of the 'digital pivot' of the COVID-19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While much work has focused on pedagogical innovation processes within universities, less has been said of the processes and cultures which foster and give rise to creativity within higher education and the ways in which faculty members are encouraged to develop their pedagogy across disciplines and within their departments. This paper examines the ways campus spaces at a UK university are utilised by staff for peer learning and the barriers and affordances for innovation and creativity in educational practice. Utilising an interdisciplinary design, this paper suggests that the various spaces available to university teaching staff are able to be further utilised to support creative practice and peer learning, presented as four design principles: innovation happens in everyday spaces, communal spaces need social functions, forums have different scales, and collaborative spaces require a collective culture. The normalising of a culture of innovation requires both physical and behavioural adjustments to the use of space, suggesting that both faculty and institutions need to work together to reimagine spaces for faculty peer learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses faculty experiences tackling global knowledge asymmetries by examining the decolonisation of higher education in Africa in the aftermath of the 2015 'Rhodes Must Fall' student uprising. An overview of the literature reveals a rich debate on defining 'decolonisation', starting from a critique of Eurocentrism to propositions of alternate epistemologies. These debates are dominated by the Global North and South Africa and their experiences of curriculum reform. Our focus is on the experiences of political scientists in Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. These countries share the same Anglophone political science traditions but represent different political trajectories that constitute a significant condition for the discipline. The 26 political scientists we interviewed acted toward increasing local content and perspectives in their teaching, as promoted in the official strategies of the universities. They noted that what was happening in lecture halls was most important. The academic decolonisation debate appeared overambitious or even as patronising to them in their own political context. National politics affected the thematic focus of the discipline both as far as research topics and students' employment opportunities were concerned. Although university bureaucracies were slow to respond to proposed curricula changes, new programmes were approved if there was a market-based demand for them. International programs tended to be approved fastest. Political economy of higher education plays a role: dependency on foreign funding, limited national resources to conduct research and produce publications vis-à-vis international competition, and national quality assurance standards appeared to be most critical constraints for decolonising the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 80,000 children in England were being looked after in Local Authority care in 2020 and a further 40,000 people were defined as 'care leavers'. Although a significant body of research highlights the prevalence of educational low achievement in the care experienced population, official government figures show that around 13% of care experienced pupils progress to higher education by the age of 19. In a climate of 'widening participation' in which universities encourage inclusion and student diversity, this research invited students with a care background to discuss their experiences of settling into university life. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with 42 students from four universities and an online survey completed by 192 students in 29 universities in England and Wales. Findings revealed that although care experienced students overcome significant challenges to progress to higher education, over half considered dropping out. Others reported feeling isolated and inadequately supported, both financially and pastorally, by their institution. This paper uses a lens of resilience to consider the environmental factors that impact upon student transitions, and concludes that universities must act to balance inequalities in order to appropriately welcome and appreciate care leavers for the skills and experience they bring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a fragmented and complex literature about higher education leadership representing a diversity of ideological perspectives about its nature and purposes. Internationally, the literature has been strongly shaped by the importation of concepts and theories from management studies and a tradition of scholarship led by university leader-researchers. Drawing on an extensive literature review—drawing on over 250 books, book chapters, reports and journal articles—this paper identifies three key perspectives. The Traditionalist perspective is concerned with the cultural context, arguing that the import of neoliberal business practices into university leadership and management has undermined academic self-governance. The Reformist perspective focuses on values from a social justice perspective arguing for a more democratic and inclusive style of leadership including participation from historically under-represented groups. Finally, the Pragmatist perspective is more functionally focused in identifying the capabilities, skills and competences needed for effective leadership in universities at all levels. These three perspectives provide important insights into the culture, values and competences of university leadership reflecting the distinctive culture of higher education (traditionalist), its values as a reflection of wider society (reformist) and how best to practically manage and achieve positive change in such an environment (pragmatist). An appreciation of these perspectives and the skills, values and knowledge embedded in the literature will facilitate the evolution of leadership development and practice in alignment with contemporary organisational needs and societal expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the intersection of income and race in structuring access to higher education among students that participate in a national high-stakes exam in Brazil. Our objectives are (i) to estimate the probability of students coming from different income strata, racial groups, and performance levels to access higher education and (ii) to decompose income and racial effects into direct (net of educational performance) and indirect effects (through educational performance). Our data comes from a panel of high school graduates tracked between 2012 and 2017 and allow us to describe the following findings. Firstly, the probability of entering higher education is always higher among candidates from higher income strata. Second, there is a convergence in admission probabilities across the performance scale. Third, the admission curve across a performance scale is much steeper among applicants from low-income strata compared to richer students. In all of these results, students self-identified as black, brown, or indigenous (BBI) are less likely to transition to higher education than whites, even though they are in the same income and performance strata. We suggest that students from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds benefit from alternative entry strategies, such as paying tuition at less competitive private colleges. For students from low-income strata, the main alternative for entering higher education is through high academic performance. By decomposing racial effects, we show the cumulative effect of racial stratification; the gap between white and BBI students is both related to higher propensity of transitioning to higher education and higher educational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on research exploring the academic workload and performance practices of Australian universities. This research has identified a suite of activities associated with teaching, research and service, each with an associated time value (allocation). This led to the development of the academic workload estimation tool (AWET). In 2020, to validate the findings, we contacted academics willing to participate further and conducted interviews. We used the AWET to estimate workload for each individual for the previous year and compared it to the workload allocated according to their institutional workload model. Discrepancies were then discussed to ascertain to what extent the AWET was able to capture their work. In general, the participants thought the AWET provided a more realistic estimate of their actual work and highlighted how much is underestimated or unaccounted for by the workload models used within their institutions. It also showed how academic performance policies, focussed primarily on research output, disadvantaged many individuals because they ignored or minimised many scholarly, teaching and service-related tasks inherent in the academic role. Overall, the findings showed the AWET was a useful tool to discuss academic work and assisted them to better capture the complexity and extent of what they did. We offer the AWET as a validated approach for academics to estimate their workload in a holistic and transparent manner. We suggest its implementation institution-wide, along with an aligned performance policy, will facilitate negotiation of reasonable performance expectations. This will rebuild trust in the processes and improve a university's effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scholars have noted the detrimental nature of the various changes in higher education prompted by neoliberalism, its impact on the experiences of international Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students has yet to be adequately studied. Informed by Bourdieu's concepts of doxa, field, habitus, and capital, this paper examines the ways in which neoliberalism as doxa in the Australian higher education field has colonised the perception and practice of Chinese international HDR students whilst some students were able to demonstrate resilience to the pervasive neoliberal practices. The paper draws on a larger qualitative research project including interviews with 18 Chinese HDR students from four Australian universities. Data suggest that Chinese HDR research students gradually developed intensified dispositions of self-reliance and self-exploitation in response to neoliberal academic practices whilst others were enculturated into a floating habitus (or vulnerable position) in relation to academic publishing as they attempted to negotiate the tensions across fields and over time. Data further reveal that some participants demonstrated resilience to neoliberalism when empowered by their supervisors with less utilitarian and more critically reflexive supervisory practices. The paper argues that the embrace of neoliberalism in the Australian higher education field has become widespread yet controversial, and that thinking and enacting resilience sociologically may de-neoliberalise the higher education field in Australia and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature offers a theoretical framework exemplifying the inherent tensions between "becoming Chinese" and "remaining global" in the evolution of the international status of Hong Kong. Adopting this framework, this paper examines the global position of Hong Kong's higher education through an investigation of universities' participation in China's Belt and Road Initiative and Greater Bay Area development plan. Specifically, drawing on data from interviews about universities' engagement with the two Chinese grand strategies, the paper discusses university leaders and academics' experience and perception of Hong Kong's global status against a policy context that foregrounds a deeper integration with the Chinese national development. This discussion offers a theoretical dialogue that reveals different but overlapping scenarios for the future of Hong Kong's higher education and sheds light on the link between the changing geopolitical contexts and international higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This interdisciplinary paper brings together scholarship from the fields of education, psychology, sociology and performance to shed light on three pedagogy and learning strategies to support learners recontextualise knowledge between higher education and work contexts. These strategies include offering multiple different types of performance activities and modes of engagement with different types of people (learners/experts, different cultures, ages, etc.). Secondly, it provides spaces to fail and enables testing of personal strategies with limited risk. Finally, it supports students in connecting ideas and experiences from the past, across educational experiences of different performance practices and into wider contexts such as professional work. The research, which is a pilot, recognises the ways in which these strategies align with and operationalise Guile's (2010) concept of recontextualisation, offering pedagogues tools to support learning in a similar way in which the concept of scaffolding might be seen to operationalise Vygotsky's notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This pilot study uses semi-structured interviews and a thematic analysis approach with five graduates from an undergraduate drama degree programme in London. We recognise drama as a practical degree subject and as such consider our findings as generalisable to wider practical fields and disciplines, such as engineering and nursing education, and as having international relevance. The work offers a novel approach to conceptualising and evaluating the ways in which students deploy taught knowledge beyond the classroom, in work. It offers and augments arguments around the ways in which students bridge practice and learning from within the HEI and beyond it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurs play a crucial role in fostering innovation and fuelling economic growth. China has recently sought to increase entrepreneurial intention in university students by providing entrepreneurship education based on the model deployed by universities in Western cultures. Additionally, a longstanding challenge for universities has been the wellbeing of their students. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this issue, leading to enhancing the wellbeing of university students being declared a global priority. Consequently, by drawing on a framework of conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to conceptually develop and empirically validate a model for enhancing entrepreneurial intention and wellbeing in university students. The data were collected in December 2022 and January 2023. A total of 952 undergraduate students completed the questionnaire, with 476 responses from China and 476 from the UK. Findings indicate (i) positive associations between self-perceived academic performance and individual entrepreneurial intention, whereby self-perceived employability mediates the relationship, (ii) positive associations between serious leisure and wellbeing, whereby self-perceived employability mediates the relationship, and (iii) the country moderates the association between (a) serious leisure and wellbeing, and (b) serious leisure and self-perceived employability, whereby the association is stronger for China than for the UK. The theoretical contribution comes from constructing and empirically validating a model, evidencing alignment and divergence by country concerning acquiring specific personal resources via self-perceived academic performance, serious leisure, and self-perceived employability. Practical and policy implications arise from suggesting how higher education institutions can support their students to enhance individual entrepreneurial intention and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A considerable body of literature has documented the significance of fair treatment in terms of generating trust towards decision-makers across different institutional contexts. It has also been demonstrated that even young children are sensitive to procedural justice, and that experiences of both fairness and unfairness help shape young people's wider attitudes towards authority. In this paper, we seek to extend these findings into the academic context. We use data from two separate studies of university students in Poland. In study 1 (N = 315), using a survey to capture students' actual experiences, we find that fair treatment was a stronger predictor of perceived legitimacy of university authorities than were fair outcomes. In study 2 (N = 751), also using a survey of a nationally representative sample of university students, we demonstrate that this procedural effect is mediated by students' identification with their university, and that trust in academic authorities translates into higher levels of engagement and lower levels of burnout. Academic identification fully mediated the relationship between both procedural and distributive fairness and engagement and partly mediated the relationship between the two dimensions of fairness and burnout. We conclude that the experience of procedural fairness leads students to more strongly identify with their university and thereby enhances their trust in university authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of data on values through instruments such as the World Values Survey has focused attention on two opposing but inter-related trends, namely the combination of substantial cultural change in many countries and the persistence of distinctive traditional values. This reflects the interplay between social changes associated with modernisation and globalisation—including increased global trade and the rise of global popular culture—with traditional values country-specific systems. In this paper, we introduce a focus on another potentially important source of change, that of widening higher education participation and attainment, and the extent to which self-reported values differ between university graduates and non-graduates. We investigated this question using data from the most recent collection of the World Values Survey (2017–2020) for six core values—family, friends, leisure, work, politics, and religion—and tested for the influence of higher education attainment on the perceived "importance" of each value and the extent to which this influence differs across values and in gender, generation and country grouping sub-samples. We find evidence for consistent effects in most contexts, with no statistical differences between graduates on non-graduates in relation to the propensity to view family and work as important, statistically significant positive effects on the propensity of graduates to view friends, leisure, and politics as important, and a significant negative effect in relation to religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, an undergraduate teacher education course is used to explore whether and how academic reading seminars reflect the theoretical notion of academic literacies and provide a learning environment for developing academic and professional learning and engagement. The data analyzed in this article are transcribed recordings of small group activities where students discuss scientific articles based on a template. First, our empirical analysis shows that the use of the template facilitated dialogical discussions and the development of a cognitive skillset and disciplinary categories when used in a social setting. Second, we found that the most challenging part of designing a reading practice related to the academic literacies tradition was fostering a dialogical environment for discussing the validity of findings across different contexts and provide for discussions encompassing complexity, nuances, and meaning making. We found traces of such discussions in all the transcripts; however, many examples were in a premature stage. The paper concludes with a discussion on, and some suggestions for, further development of the template used in the reading seminars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, government policies that target the rapid internationalization of Japanese higher education have provided new career opportunities especially for scholars with experience of studying and teaching abroad. This autoethnographic paper draws on such "migrant" faculty's engagement in formal curriculum development to illustrate their active negotiations within the micro-level processes of internationalization of a Japanese University. More specifically, the analysis focuses first on the enactment of agencies to negotiate diverse understandings of "culture" and "discipline" in the process of building a "Japanese Studies" curriculum. The paper then draws on those negotiations to show how those agencies were transformative; namely how they impacted on and challenged the framing and the practice of the official framework of "Japanese Studies" at University X. This study aims, therefore, to shed light on the ways individual migrant faculty members of diverse backgrounds, may constructively contribute to internationalization processes of higher education when such faculty's active interactions are carefully looked at and sought for, beyond established and often imagined cultural, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops the metaphorical concept of the "concertina" career to describe ways in which academic staff, across a diversifying workforce, modulate their interactions with institutional career frameworks, which tend to be unilinear and to be characterised by detailed progression criteria and milestones. In doing this, they are guided by Internal career scripts, providing an additional dimension to the dichotomy of boundaried and boundaryless careers found in the literature. Drawing on a longitudinal study between 2017 and 2020, of forty-nine mid-career academic staff across eight UK universities, consideration is given to individuals' spatial movements, for instance, between academic activities, and professional and personal commitments; and the manipulation of timescales to accelerate or decelerate career progress in relation to opportunities and constraints. The study shows ways in which the spatial parameters of a career are being stretched in order to accommodate new forms of academic work supplementing disciplinary activity, such as online learning, employability initiatives and public engagement, as well as work-life considerations. In addition, individuals are adapting timescales to accommodate professional activities such as health practice or community outreach, as well as personal commitments such as caring responsibilities. Thus, in the concertina career, individuals expand and contract activity, as well as extending and compressing timescales. As a result, it is concluded that institutional career models do not entirely reflect the reality of career-making by individuals, which is likely to involve detours (therefore a spatial dimension) and a disruption of assumed timelines (therefore a temporal dimension). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To be competitive, universities across the world are embedding an international perspective into every layer of an institution's operational structure. For higher education (HE) providers that offer sandwich degrees (4-year undergraduate courses with a compulsory placement after the second year), this allows students to choose a range of options. Students can enter the labour market for one year, or they can go overseas to study at a foreign institution. For some students, it might even be possible to do both. However, regarding final year degree performance, which option leads to higher student performance? In this paper, we aim to shed light on this empirical question. Our results are drawn from Aston University (UK) which is a world-leading University in Advanced Technology. Overall, using a large student dataset, we find that for students who have a compulsory placement built into their degree programme, the work placement has a more powerful impact on student performance compared to an international study placement abroad. Our findings have important implications for universities across the world that offer sandwich degrees to their students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines patterns of knowledge production in the social sciences (SS) and in the arts and humanities (A&H) in Latin America (LATAM). We report on a longitudinal analysis of 127,515 journal articles published between 2002 and 2018. The analysis reveals six major patterns: (i) a rapid growth in the production of journal articles; (ii) large differences in article production across nations; (iii) significant variations in the magnitude and the growth of articles across disciplines within the SS and the A&H; (iv) a present predominance of single-authored articles that has nevertheless been declining in favour of collaborative articles; (v) a significant variation in the magnitudes of collaborative articles with researchers outside LATAM, a collaboration that tends to be with the global North; and (vi) differences in research leadership across LATAM nations. A set of possible explanations is offered for each of these patterns, set within a dynamic global knowledge production context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporarily, universities are perceived as neoliberal entities, self-absorbed, driven by corporate interests, markets and economic goals, rather than perceived as providing a public good, concerned for the wider world (del Cerro Santamaria in Review of European Studies, 12(1), 22–38, 2020). This perception of universities as individualised communities rather than collective communities (Rousseau in Social Currents, 7(5), 395–401, 2020) accentuates the responsibilisation of individuals who are viewed as responsible for solving their own problems (Martinez and Garcia in What is neoliberalism, 2000), including ensuring their own safety (Garland in The British Journal of Criminology, 36(4), 445–471, 1996). Set against this social-political backdrop, this paper, using data from an online survey about students' perceptions of on-campus safety at a university in the north of England, shows how some students, particularly women students, view others as dangerous, rather than view them as vulnerable groups who are residing on the margins of an inequitable society. The porous borders of the university campuses amplify some students' perceptions of dangerous others and students' suggestions for campus security to keep out such others arguably serve to aggravate rather than relieve their perceptions of unsafety. Yet the porous borders of the campuses should be seen as advantageous because an ecological university can connect its students to the wider world to help facilitate care for the other (Barnett in The ecological university, 2018). In doing so, this may enhance students' own sense of well-being and safety in the urban environment. This is a timely argument amidst a global pandemic, where the university restricts access to unauthorised others and, in doing so, facilitates the makings of an exclusive community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flipped classrooms have become widely adopted in educational settings (e.g., in higher education) worldwide. However, there is a need for more precise understanding of the ingredients for student satisfaction in a flipped setting. The aim of this paper was to investigate university students' experiences of the factors that create a successful flipped course. Ten measures were used to investigate the hypothesized factors affecting satisfaction, which were chosen based on the results from previous flipped classroom studies and higher educational research. These measures were grouped into three dimensions: (1) pedagogical (five measures), (2) social (three measures), and (3) technological (two measures). Exploratory factor analysis was run to analyze the adequacy of the instruments. Results revealed that the factor structure was as expected and that the instruments measuring all ten factors of teaching and learning in a flipped classroom were adequate. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analysis was used to formally operationalize the hypothesized latent constructs, and to build a structural equation model for predicting the student satisfaction of a flipped classroom. In the end, seven factors were found to predict student satisfaction with flipped courses. The highest predictor was guidance from the dimension of pedagogy, and the second-best predictor was experienced teaching for understanding. The results, limitations, and conclusion are discussed in terms of key issues and the development of a flipped classroom pedagogical design for higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced severe cutbacks in funding over the past few years, with universities examining options for alternative funding streams, such as alumni funding. Identifying the factors influencing their alumni's intentions to invest in their alma mater can be of significant importance when establishing a sustainable revenue stream. Within this context, empirical research on the potential role of trust is scarce. This paper aims to deepen the analysis of the relationship between alumni trust and engagement as well as three outcomes, namely support, commitment, and attitude toward donation. A structural equation model was tested on two samples of US (n = 318) and Italian (n = 314) alumni. Although both countries are affluent and developed countries, the USA has an established tradition of alumni donations, which is not such a developed practice in Italy. For both countries, results confirm that engagement is an antecedent of trust, which in turn leads to the three investigated outcomes (support, commitment, and attitude toward donations). In contrast, the effect of commitment on attitude toward donations is significant only for the USA universities. The paper has interesting theoretical and managerial implications. From a theoretical point of view, the study aims to address a gap concerning the role of trust in the HE context. Managerially, the study has significant implications for universities that want to change alumni attitude toward donations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the challenges faced by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel (PAI) who are students in Israeli higher education institutions amidst periods of national turbulence and violence, particularly focusing on the violent events of May 2021. Using interviews with students, academics, and members of civil society organisations, the paper puts forth a constructivist grounded theory model that charts the impact of the violent events of May 2021 on PAI students. It reveals that students’ experiences of violence, in various forms, give rise to a host of emotional, social, and political processes that heighten their awareness of the structural violence of the broader Israeli-Palestinian struggle. In response, PAI students withdraw both physically and mentally from their campuses and concurrently mobilise within their communities to address unmet needs neglected by official authorities. The perceptions of PAI students regarding their institutions’ responses to political issues are marked by intense cynicism—a sentiment that is mitigated by individual supportive initiatives by faculty members. Based on the findings, the paper argues that periods of political escalation are not to be viewed as fleeting events that heighten emotions but rather as critical junctures where identities and perceptions are formed, leaving an impact that lasts long after the immediate turbulence subsides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publishing research in English-medium international journals has become highly valued in various academic contexts. The Russian academic context is part of this trend, which puts new pressures on Russian academics. Although a range of measures has been undertaken as publication support, Russian academics’ ability to produce high-quality papers for English-medium international journals remains low. In this paper, we present a study conducted to gain a better understanding of the possible reasons for this phenomenon. It draws on documentary sources produced by 139 academics working at 26 Russian universities. The findings of the study indicate that a large number of Russian academics remain under-represented; the existing publication support is still not focusing appropriately on publishing in English-medium international journals, and is insufficiently diverse to satisfy Russian academics’ individual needs. We conclude by suggesting that wider audiences of Russian academics should be engaged in publication efforts; higher education policymakers and institutional leaders should reconsider the role that higher education institutions play in preparing academics for publishing in English-medium international journals; publication support should focus appropriately on publishing in these journals. This paper will make a useful contribution to the literature by providing fresh insights into the issues experienced by Russian academics along their publication path and determining the areas that need to be addressed. In particular, this may be useful for academics from post-Soviet countries since many of them share common research traditions. However, potential beneficiaries are not limited to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite decades of managerial university reforms, collegiality emerges as an idea that unites academics, and that both symbolises and legitimises the collective aspirations of the academy. Typically, collegiality is positioned as an unquestionably "good thing"—an unproblematic academic ideal or an academic structure—obscuring the contingency of social arrangements in universities. This paper investigates the plurality of collegial practices that unfold "on the ground" in the context of university reforms and the diversification of the academic workforce over recent decades. The paper presents a qualitative and exploratory study of collegial practices in seven contemporary Australian and New Zealand/Aotearoa universities, employing a social cartographic analysis. Eleven types of logics underpinning collegial practices are identified and described in detail, by drawing on examples of collegial practices offered by fifteen research participants. A reconfigured picture of academic relations is presented, revealing the range of collegial practices that tend to be subsumed under a generic notion of collegiality. The effects of different types of collegial practices are examined, contesting exclusionary collegial relations and highlighting practices that have the potential to produce a more inclusive and socially just academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable Development Goal 16 commits to 'promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels'. While the concerns of SDG16 with violence reduction, rule of law, and governance are relevant to all societies, this paper focuses on fragile and conflict-affected countries, many of which have the hardest task in achieving SDG16. It analyses how higher education can contribute towards—or detract from—SDG16 through teaching, research, governance, and external leadership. It then analyses four dynamics influencing the agency of universities in fragile and conflict-affected contexts in engaging with SDG16: resource mobilisation and the public good; securitisation; academic freedom, insecurity, and politicisation; and tensions between demands for localisation and the universalising logics of liberal peacebuilding models and the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities play a critical role in the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals through the third mission, i.e. public engagement activities. However, female academics miss opportunities to be part of this mission because they are caught in many roles that prevent them from getting involved in the SDGs. In light of SDG5, Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, we conducted interviews with twenty female academics from Iran and the Philippines to investigate their aspirations, opportunities and experiences with public engagement activities. Our findings show that, while recent gender policies have enabled female academics to develop robust careers, their contributions beyond the walls of the university remain limited because of longstanding patriarchal structures, distrust in women's professional expertise and unchanged systemic constraints. By bringing women's engagement activities forward and supporting them in the delivery of the SDGs, we reframe current debates on women's roles in academia. We argue that HE institutions may enhance their third mission and better achieve the targets of SDGs by valuing women's work and facilitating their engagement activities that may lead to significant societal impact. We conclude our paper with a series of recommendations for policy and practice that support women's journeys in academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little research addresses graduate transition issues faced by transnational education (TNE) stakeholders. This paper's conceptual framework situates alumni as central stakeholders and potential partners in developing crucial insights into TNE graduate transitions. We interviewed alumni of an Australian university campus in Vietnam (AUV) about their TNE education experience and how students might be successfully supported to transition to local careers. Alumni were satisfied with the AUV's role in developing skills, English ability, and confidence. They noted the value of work integrated learning (WIL) internships. However, they highlighted aspects of their experience where the university could provide greater employability support and cultural relevance. Moreover, they expressed a desire for greater ongoing connection with the university as their careers progressed. The findings ground the paper's proposals for institutional transnational campus graduate transition support at three stages of the transnational student experience: enrolled student, transitioning student and graduate alumnus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the organization of research in high-performing research groups in an age of increasing competition and pressure from outside and within higher-education institutions. To explore how researchers navigate such pressures and demands, the practice and perceptions of four high-performing research groups in Denmark and the Netherlands are examined, and the extent to which these groups can be understood as “communities of practice” or if they are displaying “team”-like characteristics is discussed. Previous studies have shown the benefits of communities of practice for organizational performance, and the present study demonstrates that the successful groups do indeed share many characteristics with such communities. A central argument of the paper is, however, also that incentive structures, inherent in many new policy initiatives that are meant to foster excellence in science, are more directed at “team-like” organization by focusing on, e.g., formally organized work processes, predefined goals, milestones, work packages, and hierarchically organized consortia. The potential implications of this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although transdisciplinarity has taken hold in many areas, it is still a concept in its early stages of development in Latin America. We see an emergent opportunity to contribute to the current discussion on transdisciplinarity and its institutionalization at universities. Our specific interest in this paper is to disentangle the conditions under which transdisciplinarity is developed in Latin American contexts and how it can be better implemented within those contexts. Our study focuses on the context of "Latin American Public Universities." We examine the following research questions: (i) How is transdisciplinarity conceptualized in university policy and what are the conditions for its institutionalization? (ii) What lessons can be drawn more broadly from the role of university policy in the process of institutionalizing transdisciplinarity? To address these questions, we take the Universidad de Chile as a case study and apply a qualitative methodology of content analysis of university policy documents in the period 2006–2021. Grounded on empirical data, we elaborate on the concept of "situated transdisciplinarity" that emerges from the interplay between practices and policy at the Universidad de Chile and serves as a tool for future institutionalizing processes. We conclude that the concept of "situated transdisciplinarity" can orient transdisciplinary research policy, by problematizing discourses and perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accreditation systems in higher education are widespread both in the USA and in Europe. However, numerous reservations have appeared in the literature about whether these systems can comprehend and represent the quality of university courses. This study sets out to contribute to this debate by discussing whether the results of the recent university teaching accreditation system in Italy are influenced by the characteristics of degree programmes, their performance, and the characteristics of incoming students. Whilst addressing this research question, this paper intends above all to give a methodological contribution by proposing an evidence-based approach that tackles the limits found in the literature in relation to university accreditation and quality assurance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With inequality persistent across geopolitical contexts, 'transformation' continues to be expediently cited in the rhetoric of higher education institutions. Illuminating alike issues worldwide, the paper critically examines race, inequality and oppression among the black and women academics who were selected as recipients of post-apartheid academic development programmes at an historically white institution in South Africa. Utilising a report-and-respond approach, participants initially responded in a questionnaire to definitions of notions of transformation espoused within The Integrated Transformation Plans of South African universities. This was followed by non-deterministic small group discussions of the researchers' interpretations of those responses. The recipients' lived experiences provide deep insights, from within, into the misalignment between those discourses espoused and those practiced, which have implications for transforming the institutional culture of the dominant in-group. Emerging ahead of the implementation of a self-regulatory tool for higher education institutions across that national context, many of the participants called for structural accountability mechanisms in the face of their frustration with current ineffectual approaches. A concern about institutional responsiveness to research findings of such critical studies is raised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to categorize and analyze the organizational culture and organizational culture components – leadership style, decision-making modes, standards of performance, evaluation strategies, perception of students, organizational unit, goal definition, and source of authority – in a predominantly private higher education sector. By examining the perceptions of faculty and senior academic administrators of the organizational culture of their respective universities, using a model that identifies cultures by dimensions of policy definition and operational control to produce the quadrants of collegium, bureaucracy, corporation, and enterprise, it provides insights on what organizational culture characteristics result in an effective institution able to respond to the ever-changing demands of the higher education landscape. It also seeks to explore whether the historical period of establishment of the institution influences its organizational culture and the features it comprises. Findings suggested that multiple organizational cultures co-exist at a time while some are predominant. The corporate culture was mostly prevailing within all universities established at any time period. It was permanently overlaid on bureaucracy so that many institutions operated in highly regulated environments with a mixture of both modes of governance. Emerging universities were found to be more entrepreneurial as per the loose-tight coupling defined in the model and the perceptions of participants. Despite the wealth of organizational culture literature on the benefits of less control-oriented cultures, private universities in Lebanon have not transformed significantly. Rather, they tend to adhere more to organizational cultures that emphasize stability amid turbulence, thus acting as a kind of security blanket or risk mitigate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about a global crisis affecting all sectors of society. Higher education is no exception. The closure of higher education institutions has dictated a sudden and unexpected transition from face-to-face to remote teaching to mitigate the spread of the SARS-CoV-2. This paper draws upon a wider piece of research which aimed to understand how higher education students adapted to the closure of their institution and how they looked at their experience of online teaching and learning. In total, 2718 students from different Portuguese higher education institutions participated in the study. Findings showed that both personal and contextual factors explained students' positive or negative adaptation to online teaching and learning as a result of the closure of higher education institutions. Institutional and pedagogical responses, individual self-regulatory and socio-emotional competencies and adequate resources were factors that led to either a more positive or negative student experience of online teaching and learning in times of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper tackles the matter of teaching in higher education and proposes a concept of 'horizons of teaching'. It firstly offers an overview of the considerable empirical literature around teaching-especially conceptions of teaching, approaches to teaching and teaching practices-and goes on to pose some philosophical and social theoretical considerations that open further the territory around teaching in university. Against this background, we propose the concept of 'horizons of teaching'. Horizons of teaching provide a context in which it makes sense for teachers to give themselves to the teaching enterprise and to go on giving themselves to teaching. Horizons include diverse and intricate layers at both micro- and macro-levels that interact in a permanent and dynamic way; they involve persons and collectivities; and they concern structures and agency. The paper concludes by proposing that horizons of teaching configure and delineate curricula and the pedagogical relationship in a way that might contain a revolutionary potentiality in recasting teaching in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]